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		<title>VI</title>
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		<section id="chapter-6" epub:type="chapter">
			<h2>INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON</h2>
<p>
Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death of Sir
Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had disappeared out of
the ken of the police as though he had never existed. Much of his past was
unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man’s
cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strange
associates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of his
present whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had left the house in Soho
on the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time
drew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to
grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of
thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that that
evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out
of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their
familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for
charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was
much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if
with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the
doctor was at peace.
</p>
<p>
On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor’s with a small
party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to
the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the
12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. “The
doctor was confined to the house,” Poole said, “and saw no
one.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now
been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this
return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guest
to dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon’s.
</p>
<p>
There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he was
shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s appearance.
He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown
pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it
was not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the
lawyer’s notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed
to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that the
doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was tempted to
suspect. “Yes,” he thought; “he is a doctor, he must know his
own state and that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he can
bear.” And yet when Utterson remarked on his ill looks, it was with an
air of great firmness that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.
</p>
<p>
“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never recover. It
is a question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir, I
used to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to
get away.”
</p>
<p>
“Jekyll is ill, too,” observed Utterson. “Have you seen
him?”
</p>
<p>
But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wish
to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice.
“I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any
allusion to one whom I regard as dead.”
</p>
<p>
“Tut, tut!” said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable pause,
“Can’t I do anything?” he inquired. “We are three very
old friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make others.”
</p>
<p>
“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask himself.”
</p>
<p>
“He will not see me,” said the lawyer.
</p>
<p>
“I am not surprised at that,” was the reply. “Some day,
Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of
this. I cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me
of other things, for God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep
clear of this accursed topic, then in God’s name, go, for I cannot bear
it.”
</p>
<p>
As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll, complaining of
his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy break with
Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long answer, often very pathetically
worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was
incurable. “I do not blame our old friend,” Jekyll wrote,
“but I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from henceforth to
lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt
my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go
my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I
cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I
could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so
unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and
that is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed; the dark influence
of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and
amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful
and an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and
the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a change
pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there must
lie for it some deeper ground.
</p>
<p>
A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than a
fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, at which he had been sadly
affected, Utterson locked the door of his business room, and sitting there by
the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelope
addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend.
“PRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE, and in case of his
predecease <i>to be destroyed unread</i>,” so it was emphatically
superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. “I have
buried one friend to-day,” he thought: “what if this should cost me
another?” And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the
seal. Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon the
cover as “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry
Jekyll.” Utterson could not trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance;
here again, as in the mad will which he had long ago restored to its author,
here again were the idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll
bracketted. But in the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion
of the man Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible.
Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curiosity came on
the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom of
these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend were
stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his private
safe.
</p>
<p>
It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be
doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his surviving
friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were
disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to
be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with Poole
upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather
than to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak
with its inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to
communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself to
the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep; he was
out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if he
had something on his mind. Utterson became so used to the unvarying character
of these reports, that he fell off little by little in the frequency of his
visits.
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